Tuesday 19 January 2010

25 man vs 10 man raiding thoughts

As most readers of my small blog know I am raiding with a strict (ish) 10 man guild of old friends at the moment. So far we have done Champion of Ulduar and made good inroads into ICC while playing about in TOGC 10 man.

My old guild who I still play with on occasions is heading down the 25 man route and recruiting for such raids. There have been various posts on the forum about it including some interesting comments as to why some of the guildies want to go 25 man.
One that caught my eye and also the eye of Tessy from Reflections from the Pond was that 25 mans are better because they require more skill and are a lot harder because more mechanics can be put into the fight that you simply cant do in 10 man due to the limited number of classes and buffs that can be bought to the raid. This seem to be reflected in a lot of general discussion on the O boards as well with 10 man being seen as “trivial” content and “something to do on off days”. Also Blizzard to an extent place 25 mans higher with such epics as Shadowmourn not being available to 10 man guilds.

This got me to thinking is this view of 10 mans justified? I have raid lead 10 man and 25 man raids in both BC and WOTLK. The major difference (and part of the reason I dropped 25 man raid leading) I found with 25 mans was the prep reparation work I had to do for the fights especially in BC when you had to work about which group the mana battery (err I mean shadow priest was in) to get the benefit of this class to the right people. In 10 mans this is less of an issue as mostly the raid is very tight and gets to know how each other plays very well so allocation of roles is not needed as people know how to support each other if they are clued up on the tactics.

But as far as fight difficulty goes I don’t think it is grossly different apart from you need 25 people who know what they are doing rather than 10 and getting 25 people who know what they are doing together is more difficult than getting 10. If 10 man raids were so facerolling easy why on my server have so few guilds got the protodrake from Ulduar 10 man admittedly more have than have the 25 man protodrake but consider the number of 25 man guilds on the server you would have expected most of these guilds to have got it. Especially as 25 man content is soooo much harder than 10 man they should in their 25 man gear have been able to face roll their way to a drake when they had a spare Saturday as the fights are that much less complex.
Most of the people who have the 10 man drakes tend to be the harder core 25man guilds and sometimes I bet their 10 man teams are probably the best of the best from a professional guild so it’s almost the cream of the cream going for the 10 man achievements no wonder they do these first before the 25 man hard modes.

I know this probably wont be agreed with by everyone and I don’t subscribe to the view that 10 mans should drop the same loot as 25 mans. But I do feel that 10 man guilds tend to be seen as subclass when compared to 25 man guilds and I feel this to be unjustified at times especially as if you want to make progress in 10 man you can afford to carry no one in the raid especially on harder modes where as from personal experience in 25 mans you can have a few people who shall we say aren’t optimal player and still make good progress. You probably aren’t going to be super hard mode number one guild on the server but I bet you can still clean all of ICC 25 man eventually while still having people doing sub par dps ect. In a 10 man guild this is more noticeable than 25 man and I have seen this back in BC where 25 man was the only game in town and tended to be more difficult.

One thing that would be interesting from Blizzard is if they set the 25 mans and 10 man raid lockouts the same so if you did 25 man you were locked out of 10 mans and vica versa. It will probably never happen as there would be an outcry that you were “depriving” people of badges and some BIS gear. It would be interesting to see if more of the “strict” 10 man guilds got some realm first kills ect rather than the usual 25 man suspects on off days.


Zetter

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

On relative difficulty of 25 vs 10:

You said you tried to get the Undying title and failed. Imagine what it's like to get Immortal.

Tessy said...

None of the raids are facerolling easy in my opinion and there are a lot of factors to consider for both of them, both have their pro's and con's.

Setting all number-of-people-related difficulties (organisation, random dc's at bad times etc) aside, I don't think there is such a huge difference between the raids.

Maybe you can carry people in normal 25mans a bit easier than in normal 10mans but you can't really do it in top end raiding (before the nerf bats comes) and hard modes, you need all 25 to put out huge numbers to pull it off.

I think your idea of having the same raid lockout timer for both size raids is very interesting! I believe it would show that the strict 10mans are very competitive challenge- and skillwise!

zetter said...

@Anonymous true due to various issues and its probably one of the most random achivments in the game raid wise. and definately is harder on 25 man as there are more people to die due to RNG issues. However OS3D was considered harder on 10 man than 25 and it appears that some of the ICC bosses are being downed by 25 man guilds much quicker in 25 man mode than 10 man.

But my point was if 10 mans are facerollable why arnt there a lot of people walking about with undying, drakes, champion of ulduar ect.
Surely anyone involved in a moderately successful 25 man guild should laugh at such challenges.

@ Tessy yep probably the bit about carrying people was a bit unfair but I would be interested to see what the ractgion would be if lockouts were shared would you see more guilds really push strict 10 man with that level of gear/ crafted stuff?

Zetter

Anonymous said...

But my point was if 10 mans are facerollable why arnt there a lot of people walking about with undying, drakes, champion of ulduar ect. Surely anyone involved in a moderately successful 25 man guild should laugh at such challenges.
Those of them who care enough to put in the time for both 25 and 10 raids, do walk and laugh.

zetter said...

I dont see a lot of evidence of it on our server the people who have done TOC hard and Ulduar hard tend to be the guilds who have also done 25 hard and 25 Ulduar hard.

If your saying a moderate 25 man can't be bothered to put in some off time to get shinies other have I find it difficult to believe as there are usually a core of player in such guilds who do have the time and the motivation as you still even in larger guilds get people who play at different rates.
More likely the 10 man hard modes arnt that face rollable so they would end up diverting to much of the 25 man time to it.


Zetter

Tessy said...

@Anonymous,

there is a difference between doing 10mans in 10man gear and 10mans in 25man gear.

Things will be easier in heavier gear because you will have a greater margin for errors.

Anonymous said...

I dont see a lot of evidence of it on our server the people who have done TOC hard and Ulduar hard tend to be the guilds who have also done 25 hard and 25 Ulduar hard.

I am not sure I understand this correctly. Are you saying that on your server the majority of the guilds with 10 hards are 25 guilds? If so, this is what I am saying as well.

If your saying a moderate 25 man can't be bothered to put in some off time to get shinies other have I find it difficult to believe as there are usually a core of player in such guilds who do have the time and the motivation as you still even in larger guilds get people who play at different rates.

Yes, I am saying they can't be bothered to do 10 hards because they are busy with 25 hards. They only do 10 hards as a side activity, and even then, they succeed frequently.

Of course, gear helps. But I think this also has to deal with the fact that most skilled people tend to go for 25s, for whatever reason.

zetter said...

My point was really that on my server moderate 25 guilds dont seem to get drakes or achive much beyond normal modes in either. Your point is that if you do 25 mans they are a lot harder than 10 and anyone doing 25 normals even in a middle of the road casual guild should easily be able to do 10 man hard modes but cant be bothered as they are doing 25 hard mode.

My argument is this is not correct and the people who succeed on hard modes are the ones who will do it regardless of if they are in a 25 man guild or a 10 man guild.

10 Man hards are not easy and face rollable if you are in a 25 man guild and to be honest 25 man on normal is no harder from my experience that doing 10 on normal its just finding the right number of people to do either who have the skill.
Sure most people gravitate towards 25 mans but is that just because the loot is better for a lot of players?

I think we will have to agree to disagree on this one.

Zetter

Anonymous said...

We are seeing the same facts but are interpreting them differently.

The point where we disagree is this:

Given an average guild that can complete 25 normals...

...you think that they would go and try 10 hards,

...and I argue that they go do 25 hards, and only do 10 hards as a side activity.

My reasoning is that the choice between whether to go do 10 hards or 25 hards is basically the same as whether to go do 10 normals or 25 normals. If a guild once resolved the latter in favor of 25 normals, chances are it will resolve the former in favor of 25 hards. This is supported by my experience as well as the experience of others. If you are unpersuaded, make a poll.

I repeat that guilds that successfully complete 25 hards then do 10 hards, easily.

If you disagree with my reasoning above, then yes, we will have to agree to disagree.

Anonymous said...

OK, I took a look at wowprogress.com for your realm. Here's a list of 25 guilds that only did 5/5 normal tier9 +Ony (no 25 hards) and their progress in 10 hards:

7x tribute to skill -- Wrath, Taboo, Kaizen, Taurens Ate My Hamster, Czech Knights, Purgatory, Ira Deorum

1x 5/5 heroic -- Angelus Mortifera

9x 4/5 heroic -- Primal, Asylum, Obsydian, Fuerza Bruta, Realization, Nullus Anxietus, Balls of Steel, Rehab, Illuminati

5x 2/5 heroic -- Relentless, Elysium, The Rebirth, Brotherhood of Dragon, Lost Souls

1x 1/5 heroic -- Quantum

1x no heroics -- Serce Wiatru

25 guilds whose progress is better than 5/5 normal, of course, all have 10 hards. 25 guilds whose progress is worse than 5/5 normal are, of course, trying to do 5/5 normal first and foremost.

Of the 24 guilds in the list, 17 did 4/5 heroic or better. If that's not an illustration that the majority of guilds that do 25 normals and can NOT do 25 hards can still completely faceroll 10 hards, even though this is likely not a priority for them, I don't know what is.

zetter said...

My post was mainly I disagree with the supposition that 25 mans are superior to 10 man and 10 mans should be seen as sub par as they are not "serious" raiding. If the rewards were the same I think you would find a lot of guilds forming 10 skilled players than say 18 skilled and some dross that prevents them from doing anything but 25 man normal with more skilled running 10 hards for the achivments.

Also from the information from WOW progress is a bit suspect as Balls of Steel and Taboo were strict 10 man guilds up until very recently.

I havnt got time to do it but I would be interested to see how many of them have done for example Glory of the Ulduar raider whos fights you must agree present more of a technical challenge across the board than TOC which relys much more on whos got the better gear and less on awareness. Try facerolling firefighter or 1 light on either 10 or 25 man?

Zetter

Anonymous said...

I havnt got time to do it but I would be interested to see how many of them have done for example Glory of the Ulduar raider whos fights you must agree present more of a technical challenge across the board than TOC which relys much more on whos got the better gear and less on awareness.

Well, that's a bad statistic to take because the majority of these guilds haven't even cleared Ulduar 25 (most are just one or two wings down), likely because they weren't too strong or even didn't exist back then.

Of the 15 guilds that have cleared Ulduar 25 on your realm (I had to use guildox here), all have cleared Ulduar 10 and only 3 are lower than 9/11 on hard modes (Aether - 8/11, Aeon - 6/11, Tauren Ate My Hamster - 4/11).

Let's wait and see how it is with tier 10. I predict the majority of guilds that will clear ICC25 will roflstomp half of the hard modes in ICC10 in their free time, like it was with previous tiers.

If the rewards for 10s were the same as those for 25s, of course, nobody would do 25s. Precisely because 25s are *harder* and it is natural for people to try to optimize their efforts and to try to get as much per time spent as possible.

Say what, I understand that you have your hands full with your existing guild, but have you ever considered giving 25 raids another go? If you ran both 25 and 10 raids like some of us do, I am sure your perspectives on the relative difficulty of the two would change.

zetter said...

To be honest if this hadnt worked out well I would have probably seen if Tessy's current guild would have taken me for 25 mans. I am not anti 25 mans its just atm the moment 10 suite me as I raid with most of the close friends I have made in wow over the past year.

Zetter

Anonymous said...

OK. :-)